Over 43,000 individuals die of a liver disease each year. Although the causes of liver disease are varied, the result, end-stage liver disease, where the liver ceases to function, will lead to the patient's death without intervention. Often, the only option is a liver transplant. However, there is a chronic shortage of donor livers, and many times the patient is too ill to undergo the surgical operation in the first place.
One suggestion for restoring liver function has been ectopic liver transplantation, where hepatocytes are surgically placed at a site other than the liver of the patient, such as the peritoneum, mesenterium, pancreas, lung parenchyma, fat pads, under the kidney capsule and in the subcutaneous space. Despite these many experimental attempts, all have failed to sufficiently restore liver function because the transplanted cells cannot engraft and/or expand enough to sufficiently compensate for the failing liver. Thus, there is a need for a method of ectopically transplanting liver cells which promotes engraftment and expansion in order to be therapeutically effective.